American theologian and author (1835-1922)
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the preacher. To which I add, especially husbands. No man is proof against the flatteries of love. At least I am not, and I am glad of it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
A golden thread, woven into the Old Testament history, renders the various lives whose stories it recounts only different phases of the same experience. That golden thread is faith.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
If the consciousness of God is possible to all healthful souls, why are so many men and women without this consciousness? There are men and women, not a few, who do not want God. They would be very glad to have God if he were always on their side; glad to have God if he would always do what they want him to do. But a supreme will ... a masterful will, a will to which they must conform, they do not want.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Innocence, temptation, fall, sin — this is the biography of every man, save only Him who passed from innocence to virtue through temptation, yet without sin. Man cannot grow from innocence to virtue without temptation; he cannot experience temptation without a possibility of sin, — that is, of yielding to temptation; and yielding to temptation is fall. Every man when he yields to temptation and sins falls from a higher to a lower, from a spiritual to an animal condition. He falls back from that state from which he had begun to emerge. It is true that the animal man is worse in his animalism than the animal from which he has emerged or is emerging. The ferocity of the tiger is no match for that of the ferocious man; the intemperance of the brute is far less than that of the brutalized man. How can it be otherwise when the higher powers which God has conferred upon him are subordinated to and made the instruments of his animalism?
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Man puts manacles on his fellow-man; God never.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Men fail to find God because they curiously reverse the position — the natural, legitimate, rightful position — between the soul and God. There is a word common in theology, though not very familiar in ordinary intercourse, — theodicy, which means justifying the ways of God to man. When a man begins to justify the ways of God to man, he has entered on a very dangerous process. For example, it is said, " If there is a God, he must be omnipotent and omniscient; and an omnipotent and omniscient God could and would make a world without sin and without suffering; but the world is not without sin nor without suffering, therefore there is no God." Such a man frames in his own mind his notion of what a God must be, and then brings God himself to that standard, and measures him by it. Theodicy! Justifying the ways of God to man! Sit, my soul, on the judgment throne, and summon God to stand before thee. "Now, Almighty One, I will see whether thou art righteous. Why didst thou allow famine in India? What right hast thou to allow a deluge in Japan? What right hast thou to allow man to go to war with his fellow-man in Europe? Justify thyself; explain thyself; answer for thyself." No man will ever find his way to the heart of God in that spirit.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The Reformation broke down the ecclesiastical system for the Reformers and the children of the Reformers. The Protestant world said, " The Pope is not the vicar of God; the Church is not the supreme and final authority." The Church had held to the sacredness of the Bible, but to the Bible as the constitution of the Church. It was not for the common people; it was for the Church; and the Church was to interpret it and to declare its meaning. The Protestant Reformers went back of the Church, of the priesthood, of the human mediators, to the Bible. They said, " Any man may take this constitution; any man may interpret it." But still Protestantism accepted and adopted — unconsciously, perhaps — the notion of an absentee God. Still God was conceived of as enthroned in the centre of the universe, as the Moral Governor; and laws as edicts issued from him; and sin as disobedience to those laws; and forgiveness as remission of a future penalty; and the Bible as the book of his laws, and an authoritative statement of certain conditions precedent to obtaining that forgiveness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The sermon was on the words—"Do this in remembrance of me." It was a doctrinal sermon. I am not sure that it might not have been a useful one—in the sixteenth century. It was a sermon against Romanism and Lutheranism and High Church episcopacy. The minister told us what were the various doctrines of the communion. He analyzed them and dismissed them one after another. He showed very conclusively, to us Protestants, that the Romanists are wrong, to us Presbyterians that the Episcopalians are wrong, to us who are open Communionists that the close Communionists are wrong. As there does not happen to be either Romanist, Episcopalian, or close Communionist in our congregation, I cannot say how efficacious his arguments would have been if addressed to any one who was in previous doubt as to his conclusions. Then he proceeded to expound what he termed the rational and Scriptural doctrine of communion. It is, he told us, simply a memorial service. It simply commemorates the past. "As," said he, "every year, the nation gathers to strew flowers upon the graves of its patriot soldiers, so this day the Christian Church gathers to strew with flowers of love and praise the grave of the Captain of our salvation. As in the one act all differences are forgotten, and the nation is one in the sacred presence of death, so in the other, creeds and doctrines vanish, and the Church of Christ appears at the foot of Calvary as one in Christ Jesus."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gospel. Every act in the great, the awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. The analogy is so perfect that we might almost be tempted to believe that this story is a prophetic allegory, did not nature itself witness its historic truthfulness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
You, mother, are not responsible to set the whole world right; you are responsible only to make one pure, sacred, and divine household.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It is simply a history of the process of life. With the secret cause of life evolution has nothing to do. A man, therefore, may be a materialistic evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist; that is, he may believe that the cause is some single unintelligent impersonal force, or he may believe that the cause is a wise and beneficent God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
He that heeds the Gospel message must be ready to do as Lot did. He had neither time nor opportunity to save any thing but himself from the universal wreck. Houses, lands, property, position, honors, friends—all must be left behind. Every interest bound him fast to Sodom—every interest but one. All were offset by that fearful cry," Escape for thy life." What ransom is too great to give for that? The conditions of the Gospel are not changed. The voice of Christ still is," Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple." It is no easier in the nineteenth century than in the first to serve both God and Mammon. The judgment which God visited upon Ananias and Sapphira is perpetually repeated. The Church is full of dead Christians, struck down with spiritual death, because they have kept back part of the price—because they have not given all to Him who gave up all that he might ransom them from sin and death.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Here we are at last. And here the evergeens are about us in a profusion which would make the eyes water of my honest friend the Dutch grocer who supplied me with my family trees so many years in New York. Our smoking nag is over his impatience now, and, being well blanketed, understands what is wanted of him quite as well as if he were tied, and stands as still as if he were Squire Slowgoes' fat and lazy "family horse." With pants tied snugly over our topboots to keep out the intruding snow, we plunge into the woods. The ringing blows of our hatchets on the cedar-trees bring down a mimic shower on our heads and backs. Young Wheaton understands his business, and shows me how the fairest evergreens are hid beneath the snow, and what rare forms of crystalline beauty conceal themselves altogether beneath this white counterpane. So, sometimes cutting from above and sometimes grubbing from below, we work an hour or more, till our pung is filled to its brim. Long before we have finished Jip has returned from his useless search, and the neighing horse indicates his impatience to be off again.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
I am not afraid to trust myself, my friends, or the heathen in the hands of him whose mercy endureth forever.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Letters to Unknown Friends
In short, there is a spiritual sense which directly and immediately perceives the world of invisible truth. In this domain it rules supreme. It has no rival, no peer. It alone is competent to investigate spiritual truth. The time will come when education will systematically develop this faculty, which it now systematically neglects; for at present it is unrecognized. Science has not heard of it. It finds no place in the customary classification of the faculties. Neither Hamilton, nor Spurzheim, nor Bain, nor Spencer recognize it. But the Bible is full of it. Life, in which are many things undreamed of in our yet partial philosophy, abounds in the manifestations of it. Moses witnesses to it. David sings of it. Isaiah, with more than mortal eloquence, portrays the immortal truths which it has revealed to him. Paul is endowed with preternatural power, because it discloses to him the sublime mysteries of the wisdom of God, which none of the princes of this world knew. And an innumerable host of Christians, strengthened, sustained, comforted by its hidden life, bear witness by their lives to its reality and its efficacy.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Temperance is not one of the virtues for which Wheathedge is, or ought to be, famous. I know not where you will find cooler springs of more delicious water, than gush from its mountain sides. I know not where you will find grapes for home wine-that modern recipe for drunkenness-more abundant or more admirably adapted to the vintner's purpose. But the springs have few customers, and one man easily makes all the domestic wine which the inhabitants of Wheathedge consume. But at the landing there are at least four grog-shops which give every indication of doing a thriving business, beside Poole's, half-way to the Mill village; to say nothing of the bar the busiest room by all odds, at Guzzem's hotel, busiest, alas! on the Sabbath day.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
We lawyers learn to study the faces of our witnesses, to form quick judgments, and to act upon them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
You believe in the literal inspiration of the New Testament Scripture. I believe it is a book half legend half history. You believe in the miracles. I believe they are mythical addition of a later date. You believe that Jesus Christ was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. I believe his birth was as natural as his death was cruel and untimely. You believe that—he was divine. I believe he was a man of like passions as we ourselves are,—a Son of God only as every noble spirit is a spark struck off from the heavenly Original. You believe that he bears our sins upon a tree. I believe that every soul must bear its own burdens. What is there in common between us? What good could it do to you or to me to take Sunday afternoon for a weekly tournament, with the young men from the shop for arbitrators?
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
I hear men talk as though prayer were of no avail unless we believe beforehand with assurance that we were going to receive all for which we asked. It is not true. We are not heard for our much asking, nor for much our believing, but for God's great mercy's sake.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish